To Thine Ownself Be True

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Book Art from the Lamb Shakespeare for the Young: A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the Lamb Shakespeare for the Young, a classic children's book version of Shakespearean plays, the opening act of Midsummer Night's Dream is retold.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Lamb Shakespeare for the Young
Illustrated by Helen Stratton
1908

Egeus comes before Theseus, the Duke of Athens to "complain that his daughter Hermia, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him because she loved another young Athenian, named Lysander."

It's funny how in this Lamb Shakespeare for the Young retelling, published in 1908, the author comforts his readers (presumably the young) that while daughters who refused to marry the suitors their fathers chose were to be put to death under Athenian law, "this law was seldom or never put in execution." The author also adds — and I am not sure Shakespeare makes such a big deal about this part of the plot — that fathers "do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory . . ."

In the drawing, Hermia is rather resigned. She sits. Her hands are calm by her side. Her father, while old, is a spry old man, and he seems animated in bringing his case before the Duke. Egeus is thoughtful like a student, with his chin resting in his hand.

I wonder if Hermia is seething with anger? Or is she just blithe and becoming, secretly humming a lighthearted tune? Maybe she is already scheming her escape with Lysander into the woods.

What do you think?

Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Lamb Shakespeare for the Young. A Midsummer Night's Dream. New York: Duffield and Company, 1908.

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Image Source: Google Books

The Famous Quote "Kiss Me Kate" From Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew"

William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1590), Act Two, Scene One, Line 1175

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Why I Listen to Rilke and Don't Write Love Poems

Rilke in "Letters to a Young Poet" —

Reading again the injunction Rilke gave to his younger protege not to write love poems because they are too “facile and ordinary,” I am reminded why I do not write love poems.
It’s an overwrought genre.
Look. Love poems are preferably saturated in the oeuvre: Shakespeare’s doting sonnets alone give us all we need:

The Nike of Samothrace

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Memoir

A Few Stray Observations On William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (With a Copy of the Poem)

Shakespeare wrote "the marriage of true minds admits no impediments" and true love remains constant even in a tempest, a fixed star in love's night sky; even though Time rages; rosy lips fade; love never dies - at least spiritual love.
     An astute observer, by the way, as an aside, would notice that the stars are not truly fixed in the sky. Every atom in the universe, stars included, are moving outward at a quickening pace. Where's my astrophysicist when I need him?
     And I don't recommend remaining unshaken in a storm. King Lear barely pulled it off on the heath and you're bound to get hit by a renegade umbrella to the head. 
But, I digress.     The sonnet reminds readers of everyone who has ever loved: Heloise and Abelard, among them. They never tasted physical love, but their eternal love lives on forever in their passionate letters.
     I think of love that inhabits a lifespan. Love that lives on even after the first love.
     I think of Cupid and Psyche: the marriage of Eros and Mind.
     The poem is fresh in my memory for we did a close read of it on Friday last (N.B. I am a high school English teacher).
     I like the sonnet's solution: it is a typical Shakespearean jest. I would rephrase it thus: if you can't agree with me on love, then I could never have written these words and this sonnet could never exist.

Sonnet CXVI (116) by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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